Poetry by Hilda Weiss

​Ivan CC




Before My Mother Died
                After “ín the desert” by Stephen Crane

                It is bitter—bitter,
                said the creature
                eating its own heart.

Ready and hopeful to find
the seed in the pit of the fruit,

as though it could be blanched,
rendered safe, shared,

I opened, I asked,
Is there anything you want

to talk about? We sat crow-legged,
my mother & I, intimate

near flowing water, near stone
on the edge of Tuolumne meadow.

The silence between us grew long,
a silence of two

next to each other
listening together

hearing the wind,
the water,

the stone.


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Hilda Weiss has poetry published or forthcoming in Thimble, The Bookend Review, Spillway, Cultural Weekly, Comstock Review, Salamander, Schuylkill Journal, and Rattle, among others. She has a chapbook, Optimism About Trees (Finishing Line Press), and is the co-founder and curator for www.Poetry.LA, a non-profit group that produces videos of poets in performance, interviews, and other poetry-themed programs. A fourth generation Californian, she grows her own vegetables in a garden full of native California plants in Santa Monica.